29 September 2024

Re-orientating towards abundance – Unitarians in Ringwood muse on letting go of scarcity 15 September 2024

The challenge set before us today was to look behind our thought processes and see whether we are generally operating with a mindset of scarcity.  The mindset of scarcity lies at the heart of many fears to do with survival, and is a root cause of animosity, xenophobia and conflict, even war.  For, if we believe we only have just about enough to get by, we guard our resources jealously and are reluctant to share them with others.  We begin to make judgments about whom we are prepared to share with, and put up barriers to protect our resources from others who mean less to us than those we view as our own — in other words, we begin to ‘other’ certain people.  This is where tribalism begins.

The first reading in today’s gathering was from the book Seeking Paradise by Stephen Lingwood.  Having suggested that alienation from the Earth, our bodies, our neighbours, and the source of life itself, are all, in essence, the same problem, Stephen highlighted that early Christian teaching was that evil can only be resisted by becoming deeply attuned to the divine presence within and all around.  As an example, we then heard some ecstatic poetry written by Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373 CE).


The second reading was from the Bible Book of Mark chapter 8.  This is the story of Jesus feeding a large crowd with a very small amount of food, for the second time, and Jesus’ frustration afterwards with his students, who didn’t seem to understand what had just happened and what they were supposed to learn from it.


While we were chewing these readings over we had some hymns and songs about giving thanks, the harvest, rejoicing in the truth, counting our blessings etc and then we heard the president for the day present thoughts on the two readings.


Pointing out that we need to understand what abundance is and how we can enjoy abundance in a world affected by climate overheat and biodiversity crash, and the population flows that will naturally follow, she said, 


“Abundance is not defined by having more stuff........nor is it about being able to access more and more data, information, music and moving images at the click of a carbon-expensive button.......Abundance is about connection.  Connection between people, certainly, but also connection with our environment, connection with what makes and gives life...... A greater sense of connection comes first and foremost from stronger communal living........We need to re-orientate ourselves, so that a sense of abundance becomes the whole context of our lives, the grounding on which we then go about the other more usual activities.”

 

Looking through translucent leaves in autumn, which are mainly still green but now tinged with an intense russet red colour.  The veins of the leaves are very prominent.


She explained that her understanding of the Bible reading was that Jesus was teaching exactly about this act of re-orientation towards a mindset of abundance:


“Traditional churches use the miracle stories about Jesus as evidence or proof that Jesus is actually God.  Unitarians have the luxury of skipping that entirely, treating it as not a matter of interest.  Unitarians can look at what is actually going on in the story.


“When Jesus rebukes his students he is frustrated with them.  They are not paying attention to what he’s trying to teach them at that moment.  Jesus and his friends live as Jews under the yoke of Rome and under the religious authorities intent on appeasing Rome.  The Jewish people live under a socio-economic and political yoke that makes it hard to find the still, quiet, clarity at heart that Jesus is entirely orientated towards and teaching about.  Jesus calls it the kingdom of God.


“In the boat he is trying to warn them about the insidious nature of the power of the religious authorities and of the king who is a vassal of the Roman imperial oppressors. But his students aren’t listening. 


“It’s not even that the students are distracted by trying to think through and understand the miracle that Jesus has just performed.  It’s rather that all they are worrying about is that they only have in their possession a single loaf of bread.  They are in a mindset of scarcity.  Scarcity is once again worrying them, and putting everything else out of their minds.

 

Looking across the tips of ripe wheat in a field, with a strong blue sky behind, not a cloud in sight.


“Jesus can see they haven’t absorbed the teaching about the miracles of the feeding of the many. The four thousand people that had gathered to listen to Jesus seemed to be in a state of scarcity.  And there was only a little bit of food to be found between the students, and this food was presented to Jesus.  ‘Hey, Jesus, here’s the problem!’


“Before doing anything with the food, Jesus blessed it.  He gave thanks.  By doing this he brought to attention what wonder and a marvel it was to have this food at all.  Then he broke the food up.  He split it into even smaller pieces, and gave it away.  He told others to give it away too, to share it with everyone.  It was distributed widely.  And somehow, in seeing it as a gift, a wonder, a measure of abundance, and giving it away, it actually became an abundance.  


“And this was the second time Jesus had done this.  So Jesus is disappointed and cross that having done this — and not just once but twice — his students now on the boat still haven’t understood.  Those closest to him, those who claim allegiance to him and his teaching about living in the kingdom, are not even listening to him.


“He rebukes them, but even now he doesn’t explain it for them.  He leaves it for them to work out for themselves;  and so it is left for us to work out for ourselves, as well.  


“I think the story about the rebuke by Jesus holds this message :  Look, you live in paradise, a place of abundance.  You think you have almost nothing, just enough to maybe get by, and you worry about the future.  Whereas with gratefulness and wonder and thanksgiving and sharing you have everything you need, and much much more than you need.  All it takes is a re-orientation.  All it takes is a mindset of abundance.”


pastoral scene of a wide slow-flowing river winding its way through green pastures, surrounded by hedges and trees

 





29 August 2024

August 2024 gathering for reverence – The Great Unknowing – #Unitarians in Ringwood

The thing about faith of any type is that it is actually about not knowing.  Do you have faith in bus timetables?  Do you act as though the bus will come along at the time it says in the timetable, even though you will not be surprised if it doesn’t arrive as predicted?  

Faith is about acting ‘as if’, using some kind of mental model for how the world works, making some kind of decisions about how you can use what the world offers — even if that mental model, like the bus timetable, doesn’t completely represent what then takes place.


People who hold a religious faith are doing exactly the same.  They have in mind some sort of working model for how to get their lives together, some sort of feel for what the whole universe — what is in it, and what is beyond it — is grounded on.  And then they act in line with their model and make decisions about their actions, actions that show up in the real world.


But if any religious person claims to know, better than a non-religious person, what is actually going on, they are deceiving only themselves.


A depiction of three people in various everyday poses, shrugging their shoulders, and all of them have cartoon question marks hovering around them
Designed by Freepik at freepik.com

And that’s what our gathering on 18th August was all about.


It was all about the great unknowing.  We don’t know, and we can’t know.  Nonetheless, we have to have some kind of picture that we work to.  Some kind of ‘as if’.


We started with a poem The People’s Anthem by Ebenezer Elliott, written in 1848, querying whether crime will endlessly support the powerful and whether the powerful will endlessly tread down the majority.  The poem cried out to God, in some form or other, to save the people from endless toil and bondage, asserting that people are all children of God.  In these troubled times it seemed particularly apt, even if we don’t know what type of God we are crying out to and what we mean when we say people are children of God.  But the poem was actually set to music and forms part of the musical Godspell — so it has become a memorable hum-along tune.  You can find it here on YouTube 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1j8QvtZZc&list=RDg2RBaN3uWOY&index=8


In the Meeting House where the gathering took place.  Looking down from the gallery into the main meeting space.  The east windows are in plain glass, a pulpit between them, up against the wall.  The pews are box pews, each a private space with a little door that can be closed to keep draughts out.  General colour scheme is grey.

Then we reminded ourselves that we were sitting in a sanctuary of peace, prompted by words by Rev Tony McNeile, closing with, “This is me.  This is who I am. Here I can open my arms and my soul to the divine and the sacred and be at one with them.”

You can find Tony and some of his words here  https://tonymcneile.wordpress.com/




John Denver helped us along our way next, with his song Looking for Space.  In this song he firstly identifies that looking within often provides a sense of clarity, and secondly he suggests  that in the final analysis, “If there’s an answer, it’s just that it’s just that way.”


You can listen here   


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-qwrK3i-c


Running alongside the service’s theme of unknowing, or not knowing, there was a repeated question that kept popping up.  Inspired by the American Zen Buddhist teacher Adyashanti,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adyashanti  we were asked this several times at key points:


Where are you going to operate from? What’s your intention? What do you really value? Do you value connectedness and deep truth, or do you value fear and survival?   Where you feel uncertain, where you don’t know the outcome, when acting from the deepest truth and love will cost you something, what are you going to do? What do you value the most? 


Wooden fingerpost at a T junction in an open forest. You have to choose left or right.  Left is signposted to "SAME OLD MISTAKES".  Right is signposted to "GLORIOUS NEW MISTAKES".

We had two readings.  One was the The Parable of the Sower, from the Bible, Book of Mark chapter 4 vv 1-9.  The second was a commentary by the same Adyashanti on a saying that is within the Gospel of Thomas. Adyashanti says, “In order to come into our full potential and to embody the truth and radiance of what we are, we must come vitally alive; we must lean once again into presence; we must pour ourselves forth into life, instead of trying to escape life and avoid its challenges.”


The atmospherics of the gathering were built up one more time by music, in the Gerry Rafferty  song The Right Moment, describing the temptation to put off change in one’s life, by spending life looking for a sign instead of just waking up to what’s real.  Hear it here  


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ApL0lTQHE8


The heart of the service was an intense prayer contemplation inspired by John D. Caputo in his book Hoping Against Hope.  It started with the words, “How is it possible to pray without knowing if anyone is there to hear our prayer?  But how is it possible not to?”  It included the thought that we  would probably not be content to pray to any model of God that we can imagine.  And also the thought that if we knew to whom we are praying we would know everything and therefore not be in need of prayer.


It really did evoke the confusion of the state of unknowing, which most of us who hold faith find ourselves in, most of the time.  How can we pray?  But how can we not pray?


We then prayed for others who are in our hearts for now, in the faith that by focusing on them some remote action may yet take place, where they are, to improve their situation.  We don’t know if prayer works.  But we act as if it does.


A face to face gathering wouldn’t be the same without the chance to sing some hymns, so there were two.  One was a hymn of recognition (some traditions call such hymns 'hymns of praise') of the source of all being that is the centre of every physical dimension but also the closest presence there is at the heart of every human being.  The second was a hymn of thanksgiving for all who have brought our faith to where we are now, and whose work and actions before our own lives have provided what we need to survive today.


Handwritten note on a yellow scrap of squared paper.  It's a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."



22 July 2024

21 July 2024 – Unitarians in Ringwood connect in hope with Unitarians nationally

On 21 July we were delighted to welcome Mary Jones, Lay Leader in Training with Portsmouth Unitarians, and to have Mary lead our gathering.

The central table in the Meeting House laid ready for our gathering for reverence.  White table cloth, central chalice containing a large candle, tea light candles surrounding it.

Mary had been commissioned to go to the Annual Meetings of the General Assembly of Unitarians and Free Christians in Northampton in April, as the delegate for the Southern Unitarian Association.  And in leading our gathering on 21 July, Mary brought back the messages from the Annual Meetings, and specifically from the Anniversary Service, which is always the high point of the whole event.


The theme of our gathering was “The Ring of Hope”, and it included a story adapted from Jewish tradition regarding the strength of belief and how it can warp our vision; a poem from climate activist and author Claire Rousell, “Being Good Ancestors”; a blessing from Maori tradition; and a discussion in the round regarding what we can see of the future facing our grandchildren and their children.  We also had a number of hymns from our purple hymnbooks (thanks to the Portsmouth congregation for the loan of them), and a beautiful rendition of a song by Sir Elton John, taken from the film Moulin Rouge.


Quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, written out by hand: "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."



It was Mary’s optimistic view that when we see good change in our own lives, we can have hope for good change in other’s lives, and she took great pleasure in taking much inspiration from the Address given by Rev Ant Howe at the Anniversary service.  It was a rich homily and hard to précis, but if you are prepared to do a little work (and make a small donation, if you like?) you can download a magazine that includes a brilliant write up of Ant’s Address, at Issue 8081 of The Inquirer, here https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/samples  (cover shown in image below).


The take home point was : for those who crave a space to contend with life’s big problems, a way to connect with their spirituality, and a community with which to do that, they can still find that with us.  Within our Unitarian faith, there is a way of being religious and a community to share the journey with, that can be thing some souls are searching for — and we are not dead yet.  The task now is to wake up, strengthen what remains, and move forward, because people do need our faith.




Front cover of issue 8081 of the magazine titled The Inquirer, showing a photo of Rev Ant Howe taken at the Anniversary Service



And with that in mind it was lovely, afterwards, to recall that the next regional gathering of Unitarians and their friends will be on Saturday 7 September 2024, at the Unitarian Meeting House, High St, Newport (Isle of Wight).  Everyone is welcome (email lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com for further information).